Topic: PlayStation Plus | OT |

As a follow up to my comment 2 months ago, I am rather surprised that Sony put Heavy Rain on Plus 2 months after the release of Detroit. First of all, Detroit it out and has sold quite well. Will putting HR out there really stimulate interest in more Detroit sales? And wouldn’t the smashing success of Detroit actually enhance HR sales for those gamers who play and like Detroit but haven’t played the other QD games? Not to mention we just got Beyond 2 Souls 2 months ago.
Of course the sales success of Detroit shows that they evidently know more than me, because as per my comment above, I thought that giving out B2S in May was poor planning. I was obviously wrong. That’s why I’ll never make the big bucks.

Well I think that Sony will focus on giving its first party games as part of the psplus offerings. That way they can have aaa games without any cost. That's what subscribers asked for, after all. Just look how many they gave away in the past year and a half and how many they gave away before that. And considering that most of Sony's first party games are single player games which lose most of their value in a short period of time after release, it's perfectly reasonable to do that. They are already selling hzd complete edition for $20 without sale...

Regarding the 14-days Free PS Plus Trial, if I didn't input my credit info into my account but I still have some PS credit balance left, will Sony charge my account once the trial ends? I'm asking because its for my alt. JP account.

I’ve had a few noteworthy experiences with PS Plus games this year. These are Plus games I’ve played in 2018, even though some were carried over from when they were given out last year (or the year before) and I finally pulled out of my backlog:
Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture -
I liked this quite a bit. Slow pace and certainly not without it’s problems (like the saving mechanic) but the game is beautiful and intricate and the story is interesting. I like the feeling of walking through a rural town in England. (7/10)
Bloodborne -
Became one of my favorite PS4 games. Fantastic. (9.5/10)
Abzu -
A nice chill game, akin to Flower under the sea. The music is phenomenal. (7/10)
Fez -
I’m not a puzzle fan, but I enjoyed my time with this. I have wanted to go back and get all the cubes but it’s been so long now I’d be lost. (7/10)
Severed -
Also was pleasantly surprised with this. Perfect for the Vita. Doesn’t over stay it’s welcome, and actually although it’s short and a pretty simple map, it ended up being a deeper game than I anticipated (8/10)

Some of this year’s offerings I had played already, like R&C and Batman, both of which I liked a lot.

*Some of the Plus IGC games I have targeted to eventually play and include in my official backlog: Rayman Legends, Beyond Two Souls, Rime, Valiant Hearts, Transistor, and Papers, please.

@Kidfried Wow, you are getting your money’s worth with your Plus membership! I don’t get to try nearly as many.
I also will play Burly Men eventually. I like a really short game once and a while. I’ll adjust my expectations accordingly, given your impressions of the game. For 2 hours, it’s hard not to go wrong as long as it’s decent. And I’m curious too how people who have never played a Yakuza game will respond to trying Kiwami. I’ve still yet to complete Zero. Alas, too little time.

I'll download Yakuza Kiwami, but I have no idea when I get round to play it. When the PS5 is out?

Rime has definitely been the standout from Plus this year for me. It's the classic example of a game I knew I'd like, but just never got around to buying - just the sort of game I want on Plus.

Telltale Batman was also fun, I tend to play them as a couch co-op game with the other half, so that was a laugh.

Trials Fusion and Trackmania proved to be good games to play with the kids, along with Rayman Legends (although we already had that on PS3, but it would be rude not to play through it again).

Burly Men at Sea and Yakuza Kiwami have been downloaded but, like @JohnnyShoulder says, no idea when I'll get around to them.

For some reason in the EU store there is 15 euro discount for plus members in all Call of Duty IIII versions.

Where the heck are the PS3 and Vita PS+ freebies for November?! Sony apparently couldn't be arsed with updating the IGC this month on those systems as the October games are STILL available and there's no sign of November's games at least here in the states.

@TowaHerschel7 They are available, I just checked the app and have been since day one. As usual I am going to have to ask to please stop spreading meaningless rumors.

@Tasuki I'm not, you can't download them on PS3 or Vita. They show up on the webstore, but since I don't have a PC I can't redeem them...

@TowaHerschel7 If you have a tablet or smartphone you can claim them via the PS App.

@Tasuki My phone is too out of date to run the app.

So, having just re-subbed to Playstation Plus, I decided I'm going to play and finish (or drop, if I really dislike the game) at least one game every month, and I thought it'd be fun to talk about those here. I put names of various games into a list randomizer and what turned up first was... something called 10 Second Ninja X. It only took two hours or so to beat, although there is apparently a bunch of post-game content that I'm probably not going to bother with. For what it's worth, it's a decent platformer, with some clever puzzle elements to its levels. The idea is that, in each level, you get ten seconds to kill all the enemies, and you're awarded from one to three stars depending on how quickly you complete it. My first instinct was to keep replaying levels until I three-starred them, but I quickly tired of that and settled on two-starring everything, as I felt like that would show an adequate grasp of the flow and mechanics of each level. While I didn't want to spend an inordinate amount of time playing the game, I also didn't want to blow through it like it was nothing.

There's... not much of a story. A pirate guy kidnaps you, but you quickly learn he's just working through emotional problems, and there's an obnoxious janitor who has a sort of character arc, I suppose. it's weird.

I'll give it a 5/10, based on Push Square's scoring policy. Nothing exceptional or memorable about this at all, but it controls well and is a perfectly adequate experience. Played on Vita.

Anyone else playing the free games this month?

Onrush
I'm mostly enjoying it so far. Very simple and arcade-y racer with a focus on aggressive driving. As usual with fast racing games, though, I kind of suck at it, and crash constantly when I'm playing. With that said, unlike something like Fast RMX, the game doesn't punish you heavily for it, and just kind of throws you back into the race. I've won the majority of races I've played so far, even crashing a lot, although I imagine that'll change once I get further into the single-player campaign or when I go online.

All of the cars have different skills that subtly change how you'll play a given race, which adds an extra layer of depth to it, and there's a threadbare story mode that's still enough to keep me engaged for an hour or two at a time.

I mostly like the aesthetics of it. It's a very colorful game. The character models look pretty average, though, and the dubstep music it plays after you win a race is annoying. Also hate the replay that activates whenever someone trashes my car.

Iconoclasts
Playing this one on my Vita to have it portable. It's a BEAUTIFUL game. This is the way to do sprite art. It's not quite as exquisitely detailed as something like Owlboy, but it looks really, really nice. With that said, it might perhaps be better on Switch or PS4, as the character sprites are tiny against the giant environmental backdrops.

The game controls brilliantly, and is incredibly responsive. It's very plot-heavy so far, and seems to be set in some sort of oppressively theocratic fantasy realm. It kind of throws you into the middle of things, and you're forced to figure out character relationships and what's going on in the larger plot from contextual clues (so far... I'm only an hour and a half in, so this could change significantly).

Really happy with this one so far.

So, there's at least one boss I've encountered now that requires the player to defeat it by playing two different characters, who have to engage in teamwork to defeat the boss. It's the first such encounter in the game that has really stood out to me.

And yes, sprite art, when a lot of effort is put into it, can look amazing. The flip-side is that I find myself being turned off games with terrible-looking sprite art, like Celeste. I just can't pay $20 for a game that looks like that. Which is fine, as I'm kind of hoping to try it out one day as a PS+ freebie anyway.

That's a weird way to spell "Super Mario Galaxy."

@Ralizah @Kidfried Thanks for the early impressions. This month has games I’m quite excited about, especially in comparison to the last couple months. OnRush and Soma both have me curious enough to try, and now you have me thinking about Iconoclasts, which I had not been planning to play. The real highlight for me is actually Papers, please. I literally had gone to download it a couple weeks ago, thinking it had already been a PS Plus game many months ago, only to discover I was mistaken and so I was contemplating just buying it and decided not to. That’s the first time in a long while that has happened where I was literally thinking of buying a game just days before and then it gets announced as a freebie (probably last time it happened for me was Bloodborne). So I’m probably going to try Papers, please first with my Vita before Iconoclasts. I just wish Steins;Gate was offered as crossbuy on Vita too but for some reason they only gave away the PS3 version. I’ve always wanted to play that. Alas, I haven’t turned on my PS3 in ages and don’t plan to either. (Curses for the lack of backwards compatibility!).
Anyways, thanks for the very informative impressions of these titles.

@Th3solution I can't really summon much enthusiasm for Papers, Please, as I've owned it on PC for, like, six years, but it's a fantastic and pretty harrowing experience, and one I'm hoping more people will try. There's really nothing else like it on the market.

And, yes, if you don't mind how heavily story-driven the game is, absolutely try Iconoclasts out. I'm having a lot of fun with it.

@Kidfried @Ralizah Time. There’s the rub. Where does it all go? 😛 Another reason I was looking hard at Papers, please was my understanding that it is relatively short. It’s been a rough few weeks for me schedule-wise and the forecast looks like it’s not letting up anytime soon, so time is limited. But I see Iconoclasts is only about a 13 hour game, so that seems manageable also. Blasted RDR2 is the only epic I think I can tolerate opening up right now. And that’s another reason OnRush seems like a reasonable game for one to just boot up for short spells and doesn’t require 80 hours of dedication to maximize the enjoyment.

Wasn't too keen on Onrush when I tried it over the free weekend, so I will give that a pass. Already have Soma, but yet to even start it. Will give Iconoclasts a look after you guys comments

PS+ Games for January...

Nothing of interest to me - I may add Steep just because I can....